RUSSIA: Eleven Russian coalminers were rescued yesterday after spending six days trapped half a mile underground, as freezing water flooded into their pit from a subterranean lake.
Emergency workers used drills and dynamite to blast through from a neighbouring pit to the shaft where the men sheltered after water surged into the mine last Thursday. One man died in the flood and another is missing.
Relatives wept and called out the names of the men as, their faces caked in coal dust, they walked to waiting ambulances from the dilapidated mine. It was one of many in southern Russia built during Josef Stalin's drive to industrialise the Soviet Union.
"The guys looked fine for people who have been trapped in a mine for six days," said Mr Alexander Smetalin, one of hundreds of rescuers who worked around the clock to reach the men, only one of whom was seriously injured in their ordeal.
Survivors said the missing man had set off alone to try and find a way out of the tunnels.
Rescuers said they had found a message scribbled on the wall of the main shaft, showing where the miners had gone to take refuge from the rising floodwater.
"When we saw the rescuers, it was like the appearance of Christ before the people," said Mr Vasily Avdeyev, the manager of the mine who was below ground when water started pouring in.
"We had nothing to eat," he added. "I delivered a speech saying that a 20-day fast has never hurt anyone and it's good for the health."
Another rescued miner, Mr Vasily Karlov, said conditions had become increasingly desperate in the final hours before the rescue.
"We felt that the water level was rising and there was little oxygen and people were not feeling well," he said.
As survivors were brought to the surface at the Zapadnaya pit, a gas explosion ripped through a coalmine in Russia's Far East, killing five people.
Dozens of people die in Russia's mines each year and more than 200 miners have perished in Ukraine's decrepit pits in each of the last two years.